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Displaying items by tag: Pride of Kent

A vessel of P&O Ferries is being examined for a fourth time, after failing three inspections since the operator sacked nearly 800 seafarers.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said a team of surveyors are reinspecting the detained ferry Pride of Kent “at the request of P&O Ferries”.

P&O Ferries suspended most of its operations after it replaced 786 crew members with cheaper agency workers on March 17.

The inability of Pride of Kent to pass a safety inspection has contributed to a shortage of capacity between Dover and Calais.

P&O Ferries finally resumed tourist sailings on the key route last week but is only able to use one of its ships, Spirit of Britain, which was cleared to sail after an initial probe found 23 failings including that the agency staff did not know how to use the onboard life-saving equipment.

More from KentOnkine on the operator's Strait of Dover service. 

Published in Ferry

#FerryNews - An English Channel ferry with more than 200 passengers on board has run aground at Calais, according to the Guardian.

Local officials in the French port town report that there were no injuries when P&O’s Pride of Kent grounded on what is likely a sand bank in the harbour when attempting to depart for Dover amid severe weather this afternoon (Sunday 10 December).

The ferry is said to be “stable” and it is hoped that passengers can be transferred to another vessel today.

Published in Ferry

New York Yacht Club’s biennial Invitational Cup

Ireland has a proud history in New York Yacht Club’s biennial Invitational Cup, with Irish participation from the very start and a podium result in 2019.

In 2009, two Irish Clubs,  Royal St. George in Dun Laoghaire and Royal Cork in Crosshaven, entered into New York's newest sailing competition that was reminiscent of Newport’s America’s Cup days when 19 yacht club teams from 14 nations descended on this “City by the Sea”.

The Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup is a competition between yacht clubs, with strict eligibility rules ensuring that each team is comprised exclusively of amateur sailors.

The competition, which was first run in 2009, has drawn entries from 49 clubs from 22 nations on all six inhabited continents.

The New York Yacht Club won the inaugural event in 2009, with the Royal Canadian Yacht Club winning in 2011 and 2013, England's Royal Thames Yacht Club winning in 2015 and Southern Yacht Club from New Orleans winning in 2017.

In 2019 the regatta was sailed for the first time in the New York Yacht Club’s fleet of IC37 yachts, and Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, from Australia, became the first Southern Hemisphere club to win the trophy. And it was in this edition that Anthony O’Leary’s Royal Cork team took the bronze medal.